Consider setting Lynx' STARTFILE to something less stupid

[jdreed]

Lynx's startfile is currently " http://lynx.isc.org", which apparently exploded last week. This makes users think that Lynx itself is unusable unless they specify another start page (in fact, OLC just got a ticket to that effect). We should consider setting it to  http://web.mit.edu or  file://localhost/~/

AFAICT, this is not override-able in ~/.lynxrc, which is profoundly stupid.

[andersk]

Replying to jdreed:

Lynx's startfile is currently " http://lynx.isc.org", which apparently exploded last week.

Report a Debian bug?

AFAICT, this is not override-able in ~/.lynxrc, which is profoundly stupid.

You can override this with the WWW_HOME environment variable, or you can use a different lynx.cfg by setting LYNX_CFG. (Or you can report another Debian bug.)

[jdreed]

I assume you mean file a bug that Lynx can't handle a broken STARTFILE? That's reasonable.

I'm not convinced that a site-specific STARTFILE is inherently wrong, however (especially if it only goes in -workstation or -cluster)

[jdreed]

I wonder if we should set WWW_HOME in the dotfiles, like we do for e.g. EDITOR

[andersk]

lynx.isc.org came back up at some point.

[geofft]

Debian fixed the bug by repackaging Lynx in a way that no longer attempts to set the home page to www.debian.org, instead of attempting and failing.

See also

# Your choice of STARTFILE should reflect your site's needs, and be a URL that
# you can connect to reliably.  Otherwise users will become confused and think
# that they cannot run Lynx.

in lynx.cfg. So I'm not really that convinced that us setting STARTFILE=web.mit.edu is wrong.

That said, I propose we submit a patch to make lynx more able to deal with the home page being down, whether or not we customize the home page.